The Dark Part of Us
by wjjmwmsn5
Summary: The darkest parts of all of us hide down deep, and only the strongest love or the best people can make the light in us noticeable sometimes. The Doctor has a lot of darkness to him, but his companions show the world his light that will outshine the sun. The tenth Doctor never regenerated in The End of Time, but he still crashes into a little Scottish girl's garden...
1. Twenty Minutes

SUMMARY: _At the end of _The End of Time_, Wilfred does not get stuck in the scientist's machine. However (unfortunately), the Master still is Time Locked into Gallifrey with the Time Lords. The scientist in the machine thingy dies unnoticed to the Doctor's dismay, and he must take Wilf back to his home. The prophecy of his killer knocking four times still looms ominously overhead, but before his song ends he gains a few new companions and travels with them._

_..._

_So, then. This was originally just to get me out of my writer's block but then I spent three days doing nothing but write this in my free time, shutting myself off from everything outside of my laptop. I told myself tonight to go and talk to irl humans at seven o'clock. The next time I looked at the time, it was 7:41. So I love this story with all my heart and I hope other people love it too because damn it this is longer than three chapters in lots of books. And I have so many ideas! (coughcough Jack coughcough) Not to mention I have evil things in store. _

_And a bit of a warning here: Out of all the times I've RPed the Doctor, I've done it most successfully and frequently as Eleven. I am best at writing as him, though I think I am pretty good most of the time with Ten. There may be the occasional OOC moment or a moment where he acts a lot like Eleven. I'll watch a few of his episodes this weekend to fully get myself into his character and then hopefully it will get better as we go. Also: there are a lot of things from the episode that I didn't change. Well, the other characters are still the same people. It's just the Doctor that's different. And, basically, how can I take out "Who da man?" "I'm the Doctor. Basically... run," and "Get a girlfriend, Jeff"? _

_So here we go! Allons-y!_

* * *

"You have to bring Donna with you," Wilfred Mott begged as the Doctor took the TARDIS to his street, making sure to stay a bit away from his house specifically on the chance that Donna was home and would see it, which could never happen and he would never let it happen, though it pained him that he still came to this house so frequently but could never see her. "She's better, like I said! You can fix her, c-can't you? You can find a way, Doctor!"

"No, Wilf," the Doctor said quietly for what felt like the millionth time, but he was not annoyed. He knew how Wilf felt. He wanted Donna on the TARDIS just as much as Wilf did.

He looked down sadly and nodded.

The Doctor sighed slightly. "I'll see you again, Wilf," he promised, hoping he could follow through with it. He would hate to give him hope and for him to die, leaving the old man waiting for the remainder of his life to see the bigger-on-the-inside blue box floating through the sky. He knew that everyone he left behind, even if he didn't promise to see them again, looked through the sky for his TARDIS, but to confirm his return and never to come wouldn't be acceptable.

"Goodbye, Doctor," he said. He saluted and the Doctor looked away, heading back into his TARDIS and closing the doors.

"Bye, Wilfred," he muttered as he flew around the console, operating it on shuffle, confining it to Earth because he felt like having some of his normal human company—though inside he knew he longed for a companion, for a chance to not be alone. He now knew what that did to him and he now knew that it was not good for him to succumb to his loneliness by creating more loneliness. He felt nine hundred six years old for real and his companions made him forget how long he'd been alive and simply remember how long he'd been living. He needed more of that.

The TARDIS moved her swift, steady way to somewhere she decided to go. She ran smoothly due to his slow, careful flying of her. He was in no rush and therefore had little reason to operate her improperly and cause her to fly wildly about the Time Vortex. She chose somewhere peaceful—somewhat unpredictably, as she always took him where he needed to be and a small, quiet, sleeping town seemed like exactly the opposite of where he needed to be—and because of the smoothness and peacefulness of the flight, his expectations were for a steady landing. When was something ever that easy, though?

The TARDIS suddenly fluxed in and out of the Time Vortex, causing the Doctor to unexpectedly fall back from the console. This thereby rendered him unable to steady the TARDIS and she wildly threw him all over the room, crashing, crashing. "Interface!" he called out. "What's going on?"

The TARDIS chose a random person to be displayed as. Unfortunately, this person was Donna. He didn't have time to truly be saddened by the image, though, as the Interface evenly replied, "There have been interferences in our landing."

"What sort of interferences?" he exclaimed.

There was a short pause before the Donna's image answered unwaveringly, "Unknown."

The Doctor struggled to get up, muttering, "That's helpful," as the Interface faded. "Land us!" He helped his TARDIS do this, prancing around the console. He tried to keep himself up while at the same time trying to stabilize her. Finally, after some work and a lot of irritated grunts from both the Doctor and the TARDIS, they landed with a crash. Smoke was everywhere and there were small fires scattered around the console room. He extinguished them as quick as he could and then ordered for the extractor fans to turn on as he fled the TARDIS.

Outside was a garden, and he realized he'd landed into a random shed. He wished he could fly out of the random garden, or at least wander around the town looking for the interferences until he could fly away. But it was too late to do the latter when a little girl, no older than maybe eight, came out. She had red hair and was in her pajamas, holding a flashlight and narrowing her eyes at the strange man that flew a big blue box into her backyard.

"Who are you?" she asked, frowning.

He looked at her house as he told her, "I'm the Doctor."

She looked quizzically at his big blue box. "If you're a doctor… why does your box say 'police'?" she asked.

"Well, I'm not _a _doctor," he said. "Who are you?"

"I'm Amelia Pond," she said. "Are you a policeman, then?"

"Do you need a policeman?"

The girl looked up at the second story of her house and then looked back at him. "I'm not sure."

He frowned slightly. "How old are you? Where are your parents?"

"I'm seven," she said. She didn't answer his second question, which led him to believe that her parents were dead. She looked back at the second story of her house again and explained, "There's a crack in my wall." Amelia bit her lip and looked up at the Doctor, who was considerably taller than her due to the fact that she was a little girl and he was very tall compared to grown adults anyway.

"A crack?" the Doctor questioned her.

"Yes…"

"Does it scare you, Amelia Pond?" he asked, noting that her name was like a name in a fairytale but saying nothing of it, as she was talking and the crack seemed more important if she was acting like she was.

"Yes," she replied certainly, her voice as even as the TARDIS Interface's but with a more human quality to it—a bit of fear hidden underneath a layer of monotone that the Doctor picked out.

He looked down at her for a moment and then decided that perhaps it was more than a little girl getting scared. Maybe the crack in the wall was where the interferences were coming from. He held his hand out to her and told her to show her to the room where the crack was. As they went through her house, the Doctor couldn't notice how big it was and how many rooms there were, yet how painfully empty and quiet it seemed.

As they passed the kitchen, the Doctor peered in briefly and said, "Do you have bananas?"

She frowned at him, which made him smile slightly at her. "Um, yes," she answered.

"I'd love a banana."

She went into the kitchen and got a banana for him. He watched her walked back to him and then stop. Amelia went back into the kitchen and got herself a banana too, and then she delivered the Doctor's to him and giggled slightly as he peeled his and took the first bite out of it. Then, as they were eating their bananas, they went upstairs to Amelia's room.

"Who do you live with?" he asked Amelia.

"My aunt," she said as she took him into her room. He saw the large crack immediately and walked close to it, narrowing his eyes slightly. He got close and inspected it visually. He set his banana in his pocket. Then he scanned it with his sonic and frowned. He put his ear up to the wall near the crack for a moment and listened but no noise came. Eventually, when he was about to give up and pull his ear away, he heard it:

"PRISONER ZERO HAS ESCAPED."

He pulled away and looked down at the girl awaiting his verdict, seeming to trust him already. The Doctor reminded himself grimly that most of them trusted him this quickly and this wholeheartedly, not to mention she was only seven years old and anyone who was checking in on fixing whatever scared her so much, even if they crashed into her shed, was a friend.

"Did you hear it?" she asked. She had finished her banana and tossed the peel onto her bed. "'Prisoner Zero has escaped'?" He nodded and she continued. "Sometimes it's really loud and I hear it when it's quiet and I can't sleep at night."

"Yes," he said. "Amelia, where is your aunt?" He continued to look at the crack and scan it. Then he pressed his ear against the wall and was listening for it to say something again, though he was still listening to the little girl too.

She said, "Out."

"You're alone?" he asked her, peering over at her briefly.

"I'm not scared."

"I know."

He stood up straight, holding his sonic at his side. He examined the crack one last time before beginning to talk to her. He felt the familiar rush of a new mission flooding him even though the excitement had yet to begin. At the same time he felt protectiveness over the little girl after losing so much. He wouldn't let whatever was behind the crack hurt her. And he knew, even though he was conflicted about his next companion, that she might be it when she got older. He wouldn't let her risk her life traveling with him at age seven.

"Amelia, the thing about this crack," he said, looking down at her, "is that it's not in the wall."

She looked up at him, watching him closely. "Where is it?"

"It's everywhere," he told her slowly as he thought it through in his head. "It is two parts of the universe that should never have touched, and they've been forced together right here in your wall."

"What does it mean?" she asked him before he could continue. She didn't seem as scared as she should be; leading him to believe that she was a very brave little girl. He liked her. "What the voice says."

"Well," he began, approaching the crack again and tracing over it, "'Prisoner Zero has escaped.' It means there is a prison on the other side of this wall, in another part of the universe, and guess what?"

"What?" she asked quietly.

"They've lost a prisoner," he told her.

He began to move her things away from the wall where the crack was and then he stood in front of it, sonic poised. "If we open it, the forces will invert and it will snap itself shut," he explained to her as he began sonicing the wall. "Or…"

"Or what?"

There was no time for him to answer this, just as he had planned. He didn't want to frighten her, but this was there only choice. The wall opened up with a brilliant white light to a dark hall. As his eyes adjusted he saw a prison cell and a large eyeball popped up in front of them, menacing and seeming to be saying, "PRISONER ZERO HAS ESCAPED!" even though it was only an eyeball.

Then a light shot from the eye to the Doctor's pocket, and he doubled over but not in pain. The wall snapped shut and a calculative Doctor pulled out his psychic paper as a half awed and half frightened Amelia asked, "What was that thing? Was it Prisoner Zero?"

"I told you it would close," he said to her, looking at his psychic paper. "I think it was its guard, but whatever it was it sent me a message."

"How?" she asked when he didn't explain.

"Psychic paper. Never mind. 'Prisoner Zero has escaped'…" He frowned. "But we already know that. Why tell us anyway?"

Amelia seemed to think he was still talking to her when he asked that and she shrugged confusedly. "I don't know."

"Unless… No, but you'd know!" He thought about the interferences with his TARDIS and wondered if it was Prisoner Zero impossibly going through a crack in time and through a girl's bedroom wall, into another world and possibly another time. It would have to resist being killed, if the other side of the crack was deadly at all… How he wished he knew where it was so he could investigate over there too.

"Unless what?" Amelia persisted.

"Unless it escaped through the crack," he said finally. He remembered the TARDIS, still smoking and flaming back in her garden. "The TARDIS!"

"The what?" she asked quizzically. Amelia followed as he raced out the door and suddenly stopped at the top of the stairs. He backed up and she scrambled out of his way as he looked around, particularly looking out of the corner of his eye. Then he shook his head and ran down the stairs, his trench coat flying behind him. He raced out to the garden and to his TARDIS. He burst in as the smoke rolled out, the extractor fans still working on clearing it.

"I'll just be a moment, hopefully…" he told her. "Don't mess with the crack! I have to do something!" The doors shut on her and the TARDIS faded. He left her staring in awe at the spot where the TARDIS had been. He left her waiting in her garden for the longest time.

…

He stabilized and fixed the TARDIS, managing to do so without having to have her completely remodeled. He particularly liked the console room and the design of all the other rooms and didn't want it to change. The ride back to Amelia's house was still a little bumpy but it was much better than crashing like before, and in the time it took to fix up his console he pieced together what he was missing. He ran out of the TARDIS as soon as she landed and raced to the door of her house.

"Amelia!" he called. The door was locked when he tried to open it, so he knocked. Well, it was more like insistent banging, but all the same. When after a few moments no one came to the door, he pulled out his sonic. He then realized with a start that it was morning, and it was the dead of night when he was there before. He'd left her waiting all night with that crack in the wall. "No, no, no, Amelia!" He soniced the door and ran inside, trench coat flaring out behind him. He hurried up the stairs and looked around, now knowing what to look for. But it still remained in the corner of his eye…

And then he felt pain suddenly in the back of his head and he fell forward, out like a light.

When he woke up again, a woman who looked startlingly like little Amelia—he assumed it was her aunt—stood before him in a policewoman's uniform. He blinked, his head still spinning slightly. He picked up her saying into a radio, "White male, mid-twenties, breaking and entering. Send me some backup. I've got him restrained." He sat up from his uncomfortable position and she said, "Oi! You: Sit. Still."

His head cleared a bit. "Cricket bat," he realized. "You hit me with a…"

"You were breaking and entering," she said, staring at him coldly. He tried to stand up to finish what he was doing and to find Amelia, but he was handcuffed to the radiator he was leaning against. He looked down at the handcuffs, frustrated. Then he felt in his pockets for his sonic, and when it was nowhere, he wondered how this woman knew to take it out of his pockets. Of course, if it was Amelia's aunt, she may have told her he used it to open the crack, but even still he doubted she'd believe it when a seven-year-old told her all that. "Yes, you're handcuffed. Sit still!"

"Are you Amelia's aunt?" he asked. "Where is she?"

This took the policewoman aback. "Amelia Pond?"

"Yes, little Scottish girl. I told her I'd only be a moment but the TARDIS was a bit bumpy-wumpy." He hoped it hadn't been too long because he now realized it'd been longer than just overnight since he'd seen the little girl. He remembered telling Wilf that he'd see him again and wondered how he could keep that promise if he couldn't even keep this one to a little girl in danger. "Nothing's happened to her, right?"

She answered quickly, "Amelia Pond hasn't lived her in a long time."

The Doctor leaned forward in shock, though he asked dubiously, "How long?"

There was a short pause, then: "Six months," the woman said quietly.

"What?" he exclaimed. "No, no, I'm not six _months_ late!" He shook his head. "I promised her. Where is she? Why does she not live here anymore?"

The policewoman looked at the Doctor strangely. Then she began to talk into the radio again, ignoring his questions. "It's me again. Hurry. This guy know something about Amelia Pond."

The Doctor's face fell. She was making it sound like Amelia was dead… had been killed… By Prisoner Zero? he wondered. He told himself not to think about it. He couldn't even be sure she was dead until it was confirmed, and who knew when that would be. He would just have to try to save whoever currently lived in the house for now, and to do that he would need to see them.

"Who lives here?" he asked.

"I live here," she said. That made a bit of sense though it slightly confused him. She was the police… He set it aside as quickly as it had come up.

"How many rooms are on this floor?" he asked her.

She frowned. "I'm sorry—what?"

"How many rooms?" he repeated insistently. "Tell me now."

"Why?" she asked.

"Because. Just do it."

She looked at him like he was crazy but did what he said anyway. "Five."

"Six," he corrected her grimly.

"Six?" This only seemed to strengthen the idea in her mind that he was completely insane.

"Look exactly where you don't want to look. Look where you never, ever look," he told her. The look in her eyes told him that she knew what he was talking about somewhere in her mind and that was exactly what he had been expecting and hoping. He continued. "Look out of the corner of your eye. Behind you."

She did so with fear in her eyes, as if she somewhat knew what was back there and her mind was unsuccessfully trying to tell her not to look behind her. She stared at that sixth room's door. She shook her head as she spoke. "That's not—that isn't—that is not possible. How is it possible?"

"There's a perception filter all around that room," he told her, scowling at his own ignorance. "I sensed it last time I was here, and I should've seen it but I didn't."

The woman was still in shock. "That… is a whole room… I've never even noticed," she said, obviously very confused.

"You couldn't have noticed it. Uncuff me. Something came a long time ago to hide in there," he said. She was shaking her head. "Uncuff me."

She began approaching the door, which panicked him slightly. She couldn't go in there. "I don't have the key. I lost it."

"Lost it!" he cried. She was still approaching the door, and it irked him how he was stuck to the radiator and couldn't stop her. "Stay away from that room!" She did not listen. She came up to the door and twisted the knob. "Get away. Stay away from that door." The door creaked open and she slipped him. He pulled his restrained wrist forward as if the cuffs would fall off. "Listen to me! Get out!"

He sighed and checked again for his sonic as he called, "Where did you put my screwdriver? Blue at the end, all silvery. Where is it?"

"There's nothing here," she called in response.

He rolled his eyes. "You've lived here for six months and never noticed the door, and you really expect to see what's in there?"

She didn't answer, which frustrated him to no end. "You said it was silver?"

"My screwdriver? Yeah."

"It's in here."

"It must've rolled under the door. Get it and get out!"

He could hear her footsteps on the creaky wood in the mysterious room. "Yeah, it must've. And then it must've hopped up on the table."

He leaned forward again. "Get out of there!" He heard more creaky footsteps. "What are you doing?"

"There's nothing here. But…"

"Corner of your eye," he reminded her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Don't look at it. It's very dangerous. If it's tried this hard to keep you from seeing it, it won't be happy when you do."

Then she screamed and he yelled for her to get out, pulling hard on the restraints until his wrist hurt. She came running from the room and up to him. She handed him the screwdriver, which was covered in goo. He soniced the door until it locked, though the screwdriver was a bit off from whatever was done to it. Then he pointed it to his wrist but it wouldn't go to the right frequency to unlock the handcuffs. He looked at it and banged it against the handcuff.

"Will the door hold it?" she whispered.

"Definitely. Because every deadly alien is terrified of wood," he said sarcastically. She looked down at him briefly. "It will for a moment, but it'll get through."

"What's it doing?" she asked.

He looked up at the door and saw a bright, golden light coming from it. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "Run. I'll be fine. Your backup's coming, yeah?"

"There is no backup," she admitted.

He looked up at her, frowning. "Yes, there is. I heard you call for backup."

"I was pretending. It's a pretend radio," she told him.

"But you're a policewoman."

"I'm a kissogram!" she exclaimed, rolling her eyes as she pulled off her hat. Red hair fell down over her shoulders and the Doctor frowned even more. There was no time to ask why she was pretending to be a policewoman, though, as the door fell forward and a workman with a tool belt accompanied by a big black dog burst from the room. "But it's just—"

"Is it, though?"

The man let out a vicious growl and a series of loud barks.

"What?" she said. "I'm sorry, but _what?_" She looked down at the Doctor.

Amused, he said, "It's a multiform. One creature disguised as two, but I suppose it was a bit rushed. You got the voices mixed up there, didn't you?" He directed his question to Prisoner Zero. "Where'd you get your form from, though? You need a psychic link. How'd you fix that?"

Prisoner Zero viciously growled again and began approaching them. It opened its mouth so long, terrifying teeth could be seen. The woman stepped backward.

"Okay, stay away! She sent for backup!"

"I didn't send for back up!"

"That was a lie so it wouldn't kill us," he said snappily. "Right, no backup. We're no threat. You don't have to kill us alone, yeah?"

"ATTENTION, PRISONER ZERO. THE HUMAN RESIDENCE IS SURROUNDED. ATTENTION, PRISONER ZERO. THE HUMAN RESIDENCE IS SURROUNDED," a voice boomed.

"What's that?" she whispered.

"Backup. Okay, so we have backup! That's why we're safe."

"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED."

Prisoner Zero walked into the next room.

"That sounds like fun, doesn't it?"

The voice repeated itself as he struggled to get his sonic to work. He went through several frequencies before, finally, to his relief, the handcuffs opened and he stood up. "Run!" he shouted. He let her go first and they ran out of the house. He decided now was the time to ask her about pretending to be a policewoman, and that's what he did.

"You broke into my house! It was this or a French maid. Now what's going on?" she asked.

"There is an alien prisoner that's hiding in your spare room and its guards are going to incinerate your house," he explained as he stepped up to the TARDIS. He looked over at her.

"Wh—"

He put his finger up to his lips and said, "I don't know anything else." He wiggled the key in the lock and then yanked it out. "She won't let me in!" He peered through the window of the TARDIS. "She's on fire again!"

"What? She? What?"

"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED."

The woman yanked on his arm. "Come on." She began to pull him away from the TARDIS, but he struggled as he noticed something.

"That shed!" he exclaimed. "I landed on it last time…" He frowned and ran to it once he got away from her. She ran after him. He rubbed his finger along the wood and licked his finger. "It's been rebuilt."

"Your point?" she snapped.

He held up his finger. "It's been rebuilt for at least twelve years."

Prisoner Zero barked angrily behind them in the window he'd been watching them from, both the dog and the man's mouth opening with each bark.

"Come on," she urged him. "We have to go."

"Why did you lie?"

She grabbed his arm again. "Let's go!"

He pulled his arm away, and then decided that she was right. "Tell me on the way!"

"The way to where?"

He didn't answer. He took off toward the gate and the woman followed. They ran until they were out in the street and then he stopped her again, looking at her expectantly. She refused to meet his gaze but she didn't look away from him, nor did she answer. She seemed to be trying to avoid his look, knowing that if she saw it directly there would be no choice but to answer his questions, and she seemed to be quite adamant not to do.

"Why did you say six months?" he demanded.

"We have to go now!" she exclaimed.

"PRSONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED."

"Why—did—you—say—six—months?"

"_Well, why did you say just a moment?_" she yelled at him.

His eyes widened. He couldn't have made her wait twelve years. Couldn't have. It was not possible. He told her that he would be just a moment… How could he have been so unreliable? The TARDIS must've been more worked up than he thought. He wondered if she was rebuilding, and he hoped not but he would much prefer that to a broken console in his TARDIS.

"What?" he said. She began to run away from her house and the Doctor easily caught up. He slowed to keep the same pace as her and repeated himself: "What?"

"Oh, shut up!" she snapped as they ran down the village lane, a cyclist riding by them.

"I said just a moment!" he said.

"I'm aware," she snapped angrily.

"You're Amelia."

"If you hadn't noticed."

He frowned and put two and two together, though slowly in his shock. He still didn't fully believe—or understand—that this was Amelia Pond, the little girl who was afraid of the crack in the wall and whose parents were dead. The little girl who gave him a banana not a half hour ago? It didn't seem possible… No, it didn't seem likely. Apparently it was very, very possible.

"And I'm late."

"You just might be."

"What happened?" he said, mostly to himself.

She turned to him and stopped running. He stopped running too and faced her. "I waited twelve years!" she yelled at him.

"But you hit me with a cricket bat," he said, frowning.

"Twelve. Years."

"It hurt."

She glared at him. "I waited for you for _twelve years_ and went through _four_ psychiatrists."

"You went through _four_—"

She looked away from him and walked quickly away. He followed her. "I kept biting them."

"You bit your psychiatrists," he stated, raising his eyebrows. "Why?"

Amelia looked over at him as if to make sure he was real as she admitted sheepishly, "They kept saying you weren't real."

"I am," he said quietly.

"PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED." The eye's voice blared from an ice cream truck's speakers. "REPEAT."

It indeed repeated.

Amelia shook her head. "No, no, no," she groaned. "Come on. What? We're being staked out. By an ice cream van."

He looked over at her. "It seems we are." The Doctor ran to the ice cream van and asked, "Why are you playing that? What is it?"

"It's supposed to be Clair De Lune…" The ice cream man looked beyond freaked out by the Doctor's strangeness as he picked up the radio, spun it around, and walked off.

He stopped at the end of the ice cream van, though, and he listened. It was coming out of more than one device now: "REPEAT. PRISONER ZERO WILL VACATE THE HUMAN RESIDENCE OR THE HUMAN RESIDENCE WILL BE INCINERATED. REPEAT." He got a sick feeling in his stomach as the truth rose to his mind but he decided not to say it until he was absolutely sure.

"Doctor, what's happening?" Amelia asked.

He ran off across the road and went through the gate of someone's home. He barged in on an old woman messing with her remote, staring confusedly at her television screen. A big blue eyeball was on the screen of every channel she flipped to and it said the same thing all the radios, cell phones, iPods, and anything else that produced sound said. He took out his psychic paper and held it up to her as he took her remote. He didn't know what it said but she seemed satisfied.

"I was just about to call! It's on every channel," she complained, though in a cheery voice. Amelia soon joined him in her living room and in an even cheerier voice she said, "Oh, hello, Amy dear. Are you a policewoman now?"

"Um, sometimes, Mrs. Angelo," she said.

"I thought you were a nurse."

"I can… be a nurse," she admitted.

"Or actually a nun?" Mrs. Angelo asked quietly.

"I dabble," Amelia said with a light laugh. The Doctor looked up and raised an eyebrow at her.

"Amy, who's your friend?" she asked.

The Doctor frowned. "Wait—Amy? You're called Amy now?"

"Yeah," she said, narrowing her eyes slightly at him.

He looked back down at the remote and continued to flip channels. "Amelia Pond was a great name."

She rolled her eyes at him and said nothing, which made the Doctor feel even guiltier for putting Amelia—Amy—through the hell that her childhood must've been. Everyone must have thought she was crazy, and it would not have helped for her aunt to be the only guardian she had. It would be better for her if she had parents too to help her through whatever she went through, waiting for him to come back.

"I know you…" Mrs. Angelo said, looking up at the Doctor, "don't I? I've seen you somewhere before."

"Ah, maybe," he said. "Probably, actually." He looked up at Amy. "What sort of thing do you do as a kissogram?"

"I go to parties and I kiss people," she said awkwardly. "With outfits," she added. "It's a laugh."

"I just saw you and you were seven!"

Her brow furrowed. "You're worse than my aunt," she accused.

"I'm worse than everybody's aunt, Amelia Pond," he said, getting back to his work. He scanned a radio and the same announcement came on in different languages as he soniced. "Well, then, this isn't very good. It's everywhere… every language. Hmm." He went to the window and looked up at the sky briefly before he began rambling to himself in his normal tech babble that no one else in the room even slightly understood. "Earth, Earth, Earth. Two poles, yeah? Your basic molten core… They'll been at least a forty percent fission blast. But to power up first…"

A young man walked into the house and stopped when the Doctor started pacing toward him. He was just as tall, if not slightly taller, than the man, but he was thinking about the aliens wanting to incinerate Earth more than the height of a random man compared to his height.

"So if they're a medium size…" He ran through the math in his head one more time. "We've got twenty minutes to save the world, Amy."

"Are you the Doctor?" the man that walked into the room asked.

The Doctor spun toward him. "What?"

"He is, isn't he?" Mrs. Angelo asked, and the Doctor turned back to face her. "The Doctor! The Raggedy Doctor. All those cartoons you drew when you were little, Amy. The Raggedy Doctor."

Amy smiled politely at the old woman and cleared her throat. "Shut up," she whispered.

"Raggedy?" the Doctor said, looking out the window. He ran a hand through his hair and looked down at his clothes, which he realized now were ripped and a bit burnt. "Oh."

"Gran, it's him, isn't it?" the man behind the Doctor asked.

"Jeff, shut up," Amy said.

The Doctor grabbed Amy's hand and pulled her toward the door. He walked out with her and down the street, passing a couple unsuspecting people going along with their daily routines, having absolutely no idea that the world was ending. It was better that way. The less panic there was among the people, the easier it would be for the Doctor and Amy to get the planet safe and Prisoner Zero into its guards' arms once again.

"What are you talking about—twenty minutes to save the world?" she asked the Doctor as they walked with quick strides down the mostly empty, very quiet street.

He looked over at her briefly. "You know how I said they were going to incinerate your house?" he asked her.

"Yeah…" she said warily.

"Well, I was wrong. By 'human residence' they mean the planet."

"Where are we?" he asked, looking over at her.

"Leadworth," she answered.

He looked over at her and then around at the street. "Is this it?"

"Yes," she told him.

"No airport? Nuclear power planet? Where's the nearest city?" he asked speedily.

"No, no, and Gloucester, which is half an hour by car," she explained to him.

"Great. We don't have that much time but do we have a car?" he asked.

"No."

"So I've got a sonic screwdriver and a post office to save the world with. Oh, look, and it's not even open."

* * *

_I split Ch1 into two parts because it was really long and edited some of the idiotic typos I caught. _


	2. Ran Away

_So here's Ch2 which is actually part of chapter one but I split it up because it used to be ridiculously long and no one wants to read that much. Hopefully now I'll get a few more readers, but thank you to everyone who's seen it so far and alerted/favorited it!_

* * *

Amy looked over at them and they stopped next to a pond. He looked down at it and gestured around him. "What do you do all day? There's nothing here but this—this—what is this?"

"It's a duck pond," she told him, raising her eyebrows.

He looked down at it. "A duck pond? How do you know? There aren't even any ducks."

She frowned and stepped back slightly. "I don't know. Is it important?"

Something covered the sun suddenly, sliding over it like a total eclipse. He looked up into the sky as it went darker slightly and muttered a short, "No, no, no," before beginning to pace around the pond, thinking.

"Why did it go dark?" Amy asked him.

It brightened up again and the sun looked like a pot of magma, bubbling and boiling. Well, it was that, but now it looked like it instead of its normal simplicity of just being a yellow sphere floating against a nice light blue background of the sky. He stopped pacing and frowned at the force field over him, the direness of the situation only aggravating him more because the solution had not yet come to mind.

"What's wrong with the sun?" she asked now.

"Nothing. You're just looking at it through a force field. They're about to boil the planet." He looked over and saw all the people coming out, taking pictures and videos of the sun on their phones and sending it off to every social website they were logged into on their mobile devices. "Oh, look. I love your lot's curiosity, however inopportune the timing of it is."

Amy clasped her hands together and said, "This can't be real. It's a big wind up, right?"

He frowned at her. "Why would I—"

"You told me you had a time machine," she said.

"You believed me. You saw it," he told her.

"Yeah, and then I grew up."

He was about to say something when something huge hit his mind. "Wait!" He looked back out over the park and surveyed the humans taking pictures of the sun on their phones and spotted the one random nurse taking a picture of something else… of Prisoner Zero. He looked very nondescript though he was the most important thing he'd seen leading toward saving the world yet. He took a step toward him, changed his mind, and turned around, facing Amy. "Twenty minutes to save the world, Amelia Pond. Stay with me or not. What'll it be?"

She glared at him fierily. "No."

"No?"

"No!" she confirmed, grabbing him by the tie and pulling him toward a car that had just pulled up behind them. A man stepped out the driver's side and before he could close his door, Amy slammed the Doctor's tie in the door, took the man's keys, and locked the car. He yanked on the tie and stared at her with slightly widened eyes. She leaned toward him. "Who are you?"

"You know who I am. So, end of the world in twenty minutes. Let me out."

The man, looking frightened, said, "Amy… I am going to need my car back."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "Yes, Mr. Henderson. Now go and have coffee."

"Right. Yes," he said awkwardly. He made his quick way away from the two of them, leaving his car in their hands.

"Tell me who you are," Amy insisted.

The Doctor did the only thing he knew to do. He took the banana out of his pocket and held it up before her. "Remember this? Remember the bananas? And then I opened the crack in your wall, yeah?" he said quietly. She stared dubiously at the banana and he continued. "I'm a time traveler. What I told you when you were a little girl—Amelia Pond, it was true. I'm the Doctor. This is real. If you don't help me and get me out of this car now, the whole world will burn."

"I don't believe you," she told him.

He sighed and put the banana away. "You saw it. Same one and you know it. Amy, I'm sorry I was late. I'm so, so sorry. You just need to believe me for twenty minutes, okay?"

There was a long pause in which they looked at each other's face, deciding to trust each other wholly from then on. It was a silent agreement. A connection between the two, a bond almost as strong as the bananas they ate when Amelia was seven.

She brought the car keys up and unlocked the car door. "What do we do?"

He immediately turned, opened the door, and pulled his tie out. "I saw a nurse taking pictures of Prisoner Zero. Stop him."

He ran quickly to the nurse he saw. He looked as normal in the front as in the back. There was nothing particularly special about him in appearance. He was of average height, a nondescript hair color, a plain face. He wore regular nurse's scrubs and a jacket over it, with an average human cell phone. The only thing that the Doctor picked out that was unusual about him at all was that he was more interested in the man and his dog than the sun burning out in the sky.

He took his phone away and looked at the pictures the man took, just to confirm that he was taking them and he wasn't Tweeting about the sun in the general direction of Prisoner Zero. He held his hand out for his phone, his mouth open but completely speechless as the Doctor turned back toward him and handed him his phone back. He frowned at him briefly and said, "The sun is going out. Haven't you noticed?"

"Um… yeah," the man said quietly.

"You're taking pictures of a man and a dog. Why?"

Amy ran up, breathing somewhat heavily from running up to them. "Amy," the man greeted.

"Hi. Oh, this is Rory. He's a friend," Amy explained to the Doctor.

Rory looked over at her, laughing lightly though awkwardly. "Boyfriend," he corrected.

"Kind of… boyfriend," she admitted.

The Doctor pointed to where Rory had been taking pictures. "Why?" His eyes went between Amy and Rory's faces, piecing together their connections.

"Oh… my God, it's him," Rory said, surprised. He pointed to the Doctor.

Amy, irritated, said, "Just answer his question… please."

The Doctor also was irritated at how many times Amy's friends would delay, saying it was him, when they had so little time to save the world.

"It's him, though. The Doctor. The Raggedy Doctor!" he said.

Amy nodded. "Yeah," she huffed, "he came back."

"But he was a story. He was just a game," Rory said. "You used to make me dress up as him and—"

"_Shut up_," the Doctor interrupted. His patience had grown thin. It hushed Rory immediately and he took a step closer. He stood taller than Rory. He had to look up to see him eye-to-eye, and this didn't seem to be very pleasing to him. "Tell me why you were taking pictures of that man _now._"

"Sorry," Rory said. "Because—he can't be there. Because—he's in a hospital, in a coma."

The Doctor smiled and patted Rory on the shoulders, stepping back. "I knew it." He looked over at Amy and said, as if he was proving it to her, "Prisoner Zero's a multiform, see."

"There's a Prisoner Zero too?" Rory asked.

"Shut up, Rory!" Amy said.

The Doctor went on: "It needs a living but dormant mind. A live feed. A psychic link. What better than a person in a coma."

The man barked behind him and he turned around. He took a few steps forward, toward Prisoner Zero. The Doctor put his hands in his trench coat's pockets and realized one had a hole in it.

An eyeball spaceship came down from the sky and a searchlight shone down on the Earth's surface, looking for Prisoner Zero. It was looking nowhere near the small town of Leadworth though. "That spaceship is looking for you, Prisoner Zero. It's scanning for non-terrestrial technology. I think the perfect thing to use now is a sonic—"

He checked his pockets for his sonic and realized that he had put it in the pocket that had a hole in it because he was in a hurry before. "No, no, no!"

"What?" Amy asked.

He turned around and looked up at the spaceship, waving his arms. "He's here! Prisoner Zero is _here!_"

"It's leaving," Rory stated.

The Doctor glared at his pocket as the ship flew away.

"Doctor! The drain. It melted down the drain," she told him, as she had been the only one watching Prisoner Zero while he and Rory had been staring at the spaceship.

"Yeah, it did," he said. "It's hiding in human form and we have to draw it out in seventeen minutes and save the world too."

The Doctor went to the drain Prisoner Zero had melted down and Amy and Rory gathered around him. He wished he had his sonic, at least to put hope into Amy and Rory by scanning the drain. He stood up again and gave Amy a small smile which she carefully returned, looking down at the drain. Rory stood silently and it was painfully obvious how confused he was, still trying to see the Doctor as… the Doctor.

"So that thing… _That_ hid in my house for twelve years?" Amy asked.

The Doctor nodded. "Could've been much longer had its guards not gotten antsy," he told her. "A multiform like Prisoner Zero can live for millennia."

She frowned at him and asked suspiciously, "So how come you show up on the exact same day that lot do?" The Doctor didn't meet her gaze. "The same minute."

"I don't have anything to do with them," he assured her truthfully. "They're looking for him, but when I opened the crack and they saw me, they got a fix on me. Followed me through. If I wasn't late they wouldn't be."

"What's he on about?" Rory asked, finally becoming a fraction of a degree more into the loop, just enough that he regained the ability to speak at least—though still only confused sentences about his disbelief in the fact that the Doctor was there, the same Doctor that Amy had supposedly seen when she was seven, the same one he dressed up as, and he hadn't aged a day—and even more confusing than that: he'd never been real at all.

"Rory, give me your phone," the Doctor said, holding his hand out to him.

Rory, to emphasize his point, moved his hands as he spoke. "But how can he be real? He was never real!"

"Rory, phone. Now," the Doctor ordered. "Gimme."

Rory handed over the phone without a second thought and the Doctor turned his head down to the screen and focused mostly on it, though Rory's words, directed to Amy but completely ignored as she was watching the Doctor scan through what he needed to see on Rory's phone, still got through his ears and to his brain—but all it was was more _he was just a game!_ and _how can he be real?_

"He was a _game,_" he protested. "We were kids!"

The Doctor flicked through the images of Prisoner Zero that Rory had unknowingly taken. "These are all of the coma patients," the Doctor stated, looking briefly up at Rory for confirmation.

"Yeah," Rory said quietly, and the Doctor could tell he was going to spill into another spell of meaningless word vomit.

"Think again. They're Prisoner Zero in his eight disguises," the Doctor told him, mostly to prevent him from babbling on.

"But what we saw—that man had a dog. Does that mean there's a dog in a coma?" Amy asked him.

The Doctor shook his head. "The man must've been dreaming about walking a dog, so he got a dog." He had a thought suddenly and looked up from the phone to Amy. "Your friend—what was his name? Not Rory," he said, pointing to him. "The good-looking one."

"Thanks," Rory muttered sarcastically.

"Jeff," Amy answered almost immediately.

"Ohhh, thanks," Rory said.

The Doctor nodded. "Yes! He had a laptop in his bag: nice, big laptop." He grinned at Amy and Rory. "You two, clear everyone out of that ward at the hospital. Get everyone off the floor, and when you're done"—he held up Rory's cell phone—"phone me."

He ran off in the direction of Mrs. Angelo's house where he assumed Jeff still was. He ran down the streets and made it quickly to the house, barging in the door that led to a bedroom where Jeff was lounging on a small bed in a pink bedroom, the laptop on his lap.

"Sorry to bother you again," the Doctor said, holding up his psychic paper. "I need your laptop now."

"No, no, no," Jeff said, pulling his laptop close.

The Doctor yanked it away from him and sat on the foot of the bed, Jeff's laptop now in his lap. He raised his eyebrows at the screen and said, "Blimey. Get a girlfriend, Jeff."

Mrs. Angelo entered and closed the door behind her. Upon seeing the Doctor in her grandson's bedroom with his laptop, she asked, "What are you doing in here?"

He looked up at her and then continued working. "Oh, nothing to worry about, Mrs. Angelo," he informed her. "Haven't you seen? The sun's gone wibbly. You lot'll be worrying all about it. Somewhere out there there'll be a video conference call, all the important people panicking at once. They need something, Mrs. Angelo. Do you know what they need?"

"What?" she asked.

"Me. Oh, here we go! NASA, Jodrell Bank, Tokyo Space Center, Patrick Moore," he listed, grinning up at Mrs. Angelo.

She smiled. "Oh, I like Patrick Moore!"

"Would you like for me to get you his number?" he said absently as he finished up his hacking job.

Jeff, leaning over his shoulder, said, "You can't just hack in on a big call like that."

"Too late," the Doctor said. All the faces appeared on the screen and he yet again held up his psychic paper. "Yes, yes, hush. I know you should probably switch me off, but watch."

"It's here too," Patrick Moore said onscreen. "I'm getting it."

"Fermat's Theorem is the proof. The real one, the one never been seen before. Couldn't write it down before he was killed. I shouldn't have slept in. Anyway—ooh, good one: why electrons have mass. Oh, and faster than light travel with two diagrams and a joke. Look at your screens," the Doctor said after he'd finished mumbling. "I'm a genius. I'm clever. Now look at the sun. You need help, so pay attention."

He began typing on Rory's phone now, writing a computer virus in fact.

"Sir, what are you doing?" someone onscreen asked.

"I am writing a computer virus. It's very tiny, clever, and fast. It's a tiny bit alive too but"—he looked at the screen—"don't let on. I'm sending it to all your computers now. Get everyone around you to send it and get them to get everyone around them to send it. Via Facebook, email, text, Twitter, I don't care. Questions?"

"Who was your lady friend?" Patrick Moore asked.

"Patrick, behave!" the Doctor reprimanded.

"What does this virus do?" a man onscreen asked.

"It's a reset command, that's all," the Doctor told the people in the conference call. "It resets counters. Gets in the WiFi and resets every counter it finds: clocks, calendars. Anything with a chip will default to zero at exactly the same time." He looked to Jeff. "I could be lying, though, couldn't I? Jeff, tell them I'm not lying."

Jeff looked taken aback slightly. "What?"

"Listen, Jeff. You've got all of them listening to you. They'll offer you anything, any job you want… but first, be brilliant. Be clever. Jeff, be me. So how about it? How about saving the world?"

He was still stunned. "Um… sure," he said.

The Doctor grinned. "Allons-y, then!"

Jeff frowned. "But why me?"

He shrugged. "Your laptop, your bedroom. Now get to work." He stood up and ran from the room, leaving Jeff rather clueless in front of the people on his laptop. He yelled at the doorway, "And delete your Internet history!"

The Doctor ran down the streets. A fireman was assuring citizens worrying about on the streets that everything was fine and that this was all perfectly well. Everything would be okay. No, the world was not ending. Yes, he was sure. No, he didn't know why if this was expected it hadn't been said anywhere to reduce the peoples' panic levels. All obvious lies that the humans fed in. Anything to save the day, even if it was nonsense.

He jumped in the unmanned fire truck. The man turned around as its engines roared up. Yelling, "No! Stop!" as the Doctor drove down the street, the man attempted to follow him but gave up quickly. The Doctor looked in the mirrors, and he saw the man standing in the street. The people looked even more panicked than before they began originally talking to the man trying to console them.

Rory's phone started to ring. He answered after a moment. "Doctor?" she said. "We're at the hospital, but we can't get through."

"Okay," he said. "Look in the mirror."

"Look in the mirror," she said curiously, probably to Rory. "Ha-ha! Uniform. Are you on your way? You're going to need a car."

"Don't worry," he said to her. "I've commandeered a vehicle."

He turned the sirens of the fire truck on and put the phone down, speeding down the road. Trees lined it on either side for a long way but he sped along with a grin on his face, his trench coat thrown carelessly behind him. He'd have to remember to get a new one—that one was beyond use to him, and he didn't think he'd do a good job of repairing it. Surely he had a few spares in his wardrobe.

The next time Amy called him he was beyond the thick line of trees enclosing him on either side and was much closer to the hospital. As soon as he picked up he asked, "Are you in now?"

"Yep," she said, "but so's Prisoner Zero."

"You need to get out of there," he urged her, turning a corner.

She stopped talking to him for a second. At first he hoped she was running away from Prisoner Zero, but then she still didn't answer. It worried him but there were no screams, which he thought of as good. Still, he didn't like her silence much at all, and he certainly didn't want to lose her. Or Rory, for that matter. Not anyone. Especially not right after what had happened in his last adventure, with the Master being trapped in the Time Lock to save him and get his revenge on Rassilon. He would be sure to pay for treating Gallifrey's Lord President like that.

"Amy, what's going on? What's happening?" Still, silence. "Amy!" he yelled. "Tell me what's going on."

"We're in the coma ward, but it's here. It's getting in, Doctor," she said.

He came up to the hospital. He was almost there… He could see it. "Which window are you?" he asked her.

"What?" she said.

"Which window?" he repeated.

She looked around. "Uh, first floor, on the left—one, two, three—fourth from the end."

The Doctor hung up and drove up to the hospital. He found the window she described and sent a quick text just in case they were in front of the window: _Duck!_

He crashed the ladder of the fire engine through the window and scrambled out of the truck. He crawled quickly but carefully up the ladder; he didn't have time to fall off, get over the pain, and crawl back up again. He hopped into the window of the hospital. Rory looked stunned but Amy seemed to kind of expect this sort of thing to happen from what he had texted her.

"Am I late?" he asked. He looked up at the clock. "No, I'm not. Good. Three minutes to go. I'd say that's enough time—what about you two?"

"Time for what, Time Lord?" Prisoner Zero spit.

The Doctor stepped forward toward the alien in the comatose woman's body and stood tall and square in front of it, daring her to attack. "Stop hiding. Let them find you. Nobody dies," he suggested mercifully. There were much worse things he could do to the alien standing before him and he knew it—but apparently she didn't, as she did not back down. He hadn't expected her to.

"The Atraxi will kill me this time," Prisoner Zero said, smiling crazily. "If I am to die, let there be fire."

"Fine, then. Go back the way you came: through a crack," he said. "Still, nobody—dies."

"I didn't open the crack," Prisoner Zero said.

"Well, somebody did, didn't they?" the Doctor said.

"The cracks in the skin of the universe—don't you know where they came from?" She realized he didn't when he looked away to the floor for a second. "You don't, do you?" Her voice changed to that of a little girl. One of the little girl's voices from the comatose woman's dream. "The Doctor in the TARDIS doesn't know," she taunted. "Doesn't know, doesn't know!"

"The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall," Prisoner Zero prophesized, though to the Doctor it seemed like a bunch of nonsense he needn't worry about, coming from a soon-to-be-executed escapee he was saving the world from. He still had the Oods' _He will knock four times_ to worry about; adding stuff about the Pandorica and silence falling was something he didn't need to do.

The Doctor looked at the clock and grinned. "Well, look at that!" He pointed to the clock. "Molto bene!" The clock on the wall had resorted to saying only zero. "And it's not just that clock. Prisoner Zero, I have my team working, in one little bedroom. They're spreading my virus. They are spreading the word. And that word is zero." He motioned all around him. "Everywhere in the world, zeroes. I think the Atraxi will notice. Now, if I had a battle fleet surrounding the Earth, I'd be able to track a simple computer virus in under, oh, a minute. And the source is here." He held up Rory's phone triumphantly and twirled it in his hands as a bright light filled the room. "I think they just found us!"

"The Atraxi are limited. While I am in this form they will still not be able to detect me," Prisoner Zero said, with smugness the Doctor did not yet understand. "They tracked a phone, not me."

"Yeah," the Doctor said. "But you'll love this, trust me: this phone is full of pictures of you! Every one of your forms. And being uploaded right now." He scrolled up on the phone's screen and uploaded the images Rory captured of Prisoner Zero using all the comatose patients' bodies. "No TARDIS. No sonic screwdriver. Just me and Amy and Rory. Two minutes to spare." He spread his arms out. "Who da man?" he exclaimed.

He looked back at Amy and Rory. Amy gave him an odd look and he muttered, "So I'm never saying that again. Fine."

"Then I shall take a new form," Prisoner Zero said.

"You can't," he said. "That kind of psychic link takes months to form."

"And I've had years," she said.

Prisoner Zero glowed a reddish color and Amy collapsed behind him. He turned around and ran over to her. The Doctor knelt down next to her. "No! Amy?" He put his hands on either side of her face. "Wake up, Amy! You've got to hold on."

Rory patted him on the back urgently. "Doctor," he said, pointing.

Prisoner Zero had taken the form of him. He looked the same as he did now. His suit was battered and his Converse torn up. His tie was partly singed and the rest of his clothing had many other problems too. His hair was a complete mess, so he instinctively ran a hand through it to try and fix it up slightly, but he couldn't tell if it'd helped because Prisoner Zero's hair did not change.

The Doctor frowned. "I really need a new suit," he said, standing up and walking toward… himself. "Why me, though? If she is your link, why are you copying me?"

"I'm not," little Amelia said as she grew out of Prisoner Zero's imitation of him. She looked like she did when she was seven, on the night she first met him. She was holding his hand. "Poor Amy Pond. Still such a child inside. Dreaming of the magic Doctor she knows will return to save her." He held back his anger. "What a disappointment you've been."

"No, she's dreaming about me because she can hear me," he realized, running back to Amy. He knelt next to her again. "Listen to me, Amelia. Remember the room in your house that you couldn't see. You went inside even though I said not to. Amy, dream about what you saw in that room."

"No," said Prisoner Zero. "No. No!" Prisoner Zero began to glow. It reverted back to its normal form, a slithering snake with needlelike teeth, seeming to be suspended in the air. The light of the Atraxi's ship flooded the room again as the alien hissed indignantly. It writhed as it was restrained.

"PRISONER ZERO IS LOCATED. PRISONER ZERO IS RESTRAINED."

It was taken away, but as it went it growled at the Doctor, "Silence, Doctor. Silence will fall."

A rush of wind spilled through the room and the Doctor went to the window, peering out of it, checking to see if the force field was gone. He pulled his head back in and began tracking the Atraxi. He wasn't done with them just yet.

"The sun's back to normal, right?" Rory asked. As the Doctor passed him, he patted him on the head. "That's—that's good, yeah? That means it's over." He passed him. "Amy. Are you okay? Are you with us?" The Doctor looked up at the clock. "He did it. The Doctor did it."

"No," he said simply.

"What are you doing?" Rory demanded.

"Tracking the signal back," the Doctor told him. "Sorry, by the way."

"'Bout what?"

"The bill."

The Doctor called the Atraxi. "Oi! Get back here. I did not say you could go yet." He argued with the Atraxi a bit, throwing in things about the Shadow Proclamation. When it was over, he tossed Rory his phone and said, "Now I've done it. Come on, if you like. Allons-y."

He walked off, down the halls as Rory shouted in protest about bringing them back. Amy followed him and asked, "Where are you going?"

"The roof," he answered her quietly and angrily, but his rage was well contained. He stopped at a door and thought about entering. "Well—wait. Well, no…" He frowned. "Yes." He stepped in the room and Amy followed, soon accompanied by Rory.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked.

He didn't look back at her. "I'm saving the world. What do you think I'm doing?"

"You just summoned aliens back to Earth," Rory said disbelievingly. "Actual aliens. Deadly aliens. Aliens of death. And now you're taking your clothes off. Amy, he's taking his clothes off."

The Doctor took his shirt off and grabbed a suit he liked. It would do until he got back to the TARDIS.

"Are you stealing clothes now?" Rory asked. "Those clothes belong to people, you know."

He didn't hear whatever Rory said next, but Amy said, "Nope."

Once he was dressed he left the locker room and went out to the roof with Amy and Rory, looking up at the Atraxi ship.

"So this was a good idea, was it?" Amy asked. "They were leaving!"

"Yes, yes, leaving is good, I guess," he said. "I want them to never come back."

He stood in front of the eyeball and said, "Hello. Come on, then!"

The eye zoomed forward, away from its ship and stood in front of the Doctor. Even though it was bigger than him, he still seemed to tower over it. It scanned him. "YOU ARE NOT OF THIS WORLD," it said.

"No, but I'm quite fond of it," the Doctor said.

"IS THIS WORLD IMPORTANT?"it asked.

"Important?" he asked. "Six billion people live on this planet and I've never met one of them that wasn't important. Here's what I want you to ask: Is this world a threat to you?" When it said nothing, he went on. "Come on, you're monitoring the whole planet. Is it a threat?"

The eye showed pictures of the Earth and its people. "NO."

"Are the people of this planet guilty of any crimes by the laws of Atraxi?"

More images of the people. "NO."

"Now. Is this world protected?"

Now the images were all of the Doctor's enemies, the many people that tried to hurt Earth that he defeated.

"You're not the first lot to make it down to this planet. Believe me, there have been so, _so_ many," the Doctor told the Atraxi. "And now ask yourselves this: What happened to them?"

Images of his nine other incarnations appeared, ending with his current form. His tenth incarnation. When the images stopped, he stood there triumphantly, looking terrifying to the bravest of monster. He smiled slightly and said, "Hello, I'm the Doctor. Basically… run."

The eye went back into its ship and fled, getting as far away from the Doctor and Earth as it could. The Doctor watched the ship fly away and out of the atmosphere. Behind him Amy laughed. "Is that it? Does that mean they're gone for good? Who were they?"

The TARDIS key made a noise and he reached for it in his pocket. It glowed. He was disappointed in knowing that she had had to rebuild but was glad she would let him in now. He bolted away from the roof and was gone from the hospital before Amy and Rory knew it. He ran through the streets and back to Amy's house, back to his TARDIS. He ran up to her and put the key in the lock, opening the doors and looking around.

A grin broke out on his face as he stared wondrously at his brand-new console room. "Well," he said quietly, "look at you. Oh, you are _brilliant._ You are beautiful." He closed the door behind him and ran around his new console, operating her. He would take her on a little spin and then come back for Amy. He wasn't going to let her wait for him for the rest of her life.

He flew to the moon, just a quick trip, and then went back to Amy's house.

It was night again when he stepped out of the TARDIS doors. He waited for her until she came running out of her backyard in her pajamas, looking very surprised to see him. _Well, _he thought, _I did leave her waiting for twelve years last time._

"Sorry about running off," he apologized sincerely. He imagined she thought he had totally abandoned her again. "New TARDIS. It's very exciting."

"It's you," she said. "You came back."

"Of course I came back, Amelia Pond," he said. She marched up to the TARDIS and stood across from him.

"You kept the clothes," she remarked.

He looked down and realized he was still in the brownish suit he'd found at the hospital. "I guess I did," he said. "Like I said, new TARDIS. I didn't think to go looking in the wardrobe for my normal suit."

"Including the bow tie?" she said.

He wrinkled his nose slightly as he nodded and pulled the bow tie off. "I don't care much for these."

She frowned. "Are you from another planet?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered bluntly.

"Okay…"

"Do you want to… come see some with me?" he asked her.

"What?"

"Other planets. Want to go see some?"

Amy leaned forward and asked quietly, "What does that mean?"

"It means… It means come with me, Amelia."

"Where?" she asked.

He grinned. "That's the fun part."

"All that stuff that happened: the spaceships, the hospital, Prisoner Zero—"

He shook his head. "That's only the beginning."

"Yeah, but those things. Amazing things… All that stuff," she said. She paused and he nodded. She got in his face, standing on the tips of her toes. "That was two—years—ago!"

"Oh. Oh…" he said. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah!" she snapped.

"Amy, I'm so sorry. So that's…"

"Fourteen years!"

"Wow. Whoa. I'm so sorry, Amelia Pond. The girl who waited. You've waited long enough, Amy," he told her. "Coming?"

"No," she said quietly.

He paused. "You wanted to come with me a while ago."

"I grew up," she told him.

"Oh." He frowned. "You never want to do that."

"What do you mean?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "Growing old is mandatory, Amelia," he said. "Growing up is optional."

He snapped his fingers like River Song, back in the Library, said he did and the doors opened up, shining the TARDIS's warm, welcoming red light on her face. She looked inside for a long moment, and then looked at him briefly, laughing lightly. She stepped inside his blue box and he followed, shutting the doors. He went up to the console while she looked around.

"Anything you want to say?" he said up at the console.

"I'm in my nightie," she said quietly.

"Don't worry. I need to take a trip to the wardrobe too," he told her. He smiled back at her. "So… where do you want to go first?"

She stormed up to the console. "You are so sure I'm coming," she said accusatorily.

He grinned at her. "Yeah."

"Why?" she asked.

"You're the Scottish girl in the English village, and I know how that feels."

"Oh, do you?"

"You lived there all your life." He pointed at her. "You've still got that accent."

"Can you get me back for tomorrow morning?" Amy asked, leaning around the console and peering at him.

"It's a time machine. Amy, if you wanted me to, I could get you back here five minutes ago," he told her. "What's tomorrow?"

"Nothing. Nothing," she said defensively. "Just, you know, stuff."

"Okay. Well, I'll have you back in time for stuff," he said.

A noise came from the console and a new sonic screwdriver emerged. "Oh, look! Brilliant." He took the sonic, tested it, and put it in his pocket. "Thanks," he whispered to his TARDIS and he flipped a few switches. He typed things in to a typewriter-looking device, looking at the screen on his TARDIS. When he was done, Amy turned toward him.

"Why me?" she asked.

He looked at her. "Why not?"

"No, seriously," she said. "You are asking me to run away with you in the middle of the night. It's a fair question."

"I don't know," he said as he operated his console. "Do I have to have a reason?"

"People always have a reason," she retorted.

"Do I look like people?" he asked her, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes," she replied quickly.

"I was running on my own for a bit," he admitted. "Was fine at first but I started talking to myself. Gave myself an earache."

"You're lonely," she accused. "That's it."

"I guess so," he said. "That's it, I promise."

He turned off his screen, which had a line on it. It was shaped exactly like the crack in Amy's wall.

He stared down at his console. "Are you okay, then, Amy?"

"I'm fine, really. It's just… there's a whole world in here, just like you said." She looked out over the TARDIS and frowned. "It's true. I thought—well, I started to think you were just a madman with a box."

"Amelia Pond, I think it's vital that you know this." He paused. Amy looked at him. "I am most definitely a madman with a box." He grinned at her. She smiled back slightly and watched him spin around his console. "Goodbye, Leadworth. Hello, everything!"

He pulled the lever on his console and held on. She held onto the console too. "Woo!" They laughed and watched the TARDIS work, and they ran away from Leadworth and everything in their past. They ran away together.

* * *

_Note that the TARDIS looks like Eleven's. Not Clara's Eleven's TARDIS. Amy's Eleven's TARDIS. I like it the best._


	3. The Prison Ship

_And here is the update finally. Probably half the time I spend writing is actually spent on coming up with names and trying to get my mind to settle on a font. And the fact that I decided not to do The Beast Below yet, even though I started writing that. I don't really like The Beast Below (there are parts that I like but it's not an episode I can watch over and over and definitely not an episode I have the patience to rewrite), so I may just infer that it happened later in the story. Maybe add in a couple bits of it in the next chapter before diving in to the stuff I get to make up, which for me is the most fun because when there's no particular prewritten dialogue, I can make Ten seem a lot less like Eleven than I did in the first two chapters. Also, Amy and the Doctor banter because it's fun. Not nearly as good as Donna and the Doctor banter but yano. Amy isn't Donna. Then again Donna isn't Amy. I don't know who I like better. All I know is that Rory is my absolute favorite._

_Oh, and I've got to say this because I hate it sooooo much. That moment in a book (or in a show or something) where a character is saying something, but someone else interrupts them and they don't actually ever finish what they were going to say because it's not relevant but _**_you are dying to know what the fuck they were going to say. _**_I hate that so much. Like, I know the girl's dad is not actually a character in the book but maybe I want to know what happened to him. -_- Or sometimes, later in the book it reveals what they were going to say but it's _**_not interesting_**_ and you get so disappointed that you kind of just want to stab the character. Why couldn't you have said that earlier when _**_I wasn't dying to know? _**

_Before I ramble anymore, here's the chapter._

* * *

"Prove it to me," Amelia Pond demanded as the Doctor decided where to take his new companion.

He looked up from his new console. He liked the lightheartedness of the new TARDIS. It brought happier things to his mind, which he needed. Ever since Donna had to leave and he took Rose back to her dimension, things had become very dark for him. The loss of so many was compensated for with a brilliant new TARDIS design and a fresh companion ready to run with him all across time and space. But she was also a difficult one, he could tell.

"You don't believe me already?" he asked her, smiling, more than willing to prove it to her.

She paused and bit her lip, looking up at him. A mischievous smile came to her face. "I do… but I don't know if it's smart yet," she admitted.

He chuckled and whirled around his console, operating it with ease. Amy's eyes were glued to him until he parked them in the middle of space. He tapped a few things into the typewriter on his console and said. "Go on. Take a look—but don't step out, okay?" he said. She nodded shakily, and the Doctor watched her happily as she slowly made her way to the TARDIS doors. She peered out the windows and then looked back at him. He nodded reassuringly, and she opened the doors.

Amy staggered back with surprise. "It's cold out there," she remarked. The Doctor walked over to her, joining her on the edge. The wondrous look in her eyes brought a grin to his face and she looked over at him. They both knew she believed and trusted him wholeheartedly now, but still she continued with the act and said, "But still. You could be faking it, yeah? Really… really… special effects."

He raised an eyebrow. "Well, go on," he told her.

Her eyes flicked to him and then to the open outer space in front of them. He nodded briefly. "No!" she exclaimed. Then she paused. "Go where?"

He pointed outside the TARDIS. "Take a step. I've got you. I need to know if you really trust me anyway," he said.

She looked at him like he was crazy. He didn't mind. He just stood there and waited for her to take a step. She hesitated, staring out into space with the same look of pure amazement on her face. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, seeming to decide that if this was the last thing she was ever going to do, it was an okay last thing. The Doctor admired his new companion for what she did next, which is something he might not have done had he been in her position.

She took a step.

She shrieked when she began to float away, but the Doctor quickly caught her ankle before she drifted out of the air shield he'd put around the TARDIS. She squirmed slightly, her eyes shut tightly, but eventually she realized he was holding her in place and she laughed at herself and at the fact that she was floating in space, something very, very few other humans in the entire history of the human race could say they've done. And she was one of the only ones who could say they did it while breathing, his other companions being the rest in that category.

"_Now_ do you believe me?" he asked, smiling at her.

"I think so," she said, smiling down at him. She looked around at everything she could see, drinking it in. "We are in space!" she exclaimed jovially. "Woo!"

He pulled her back inside the TARDIS and she smiled at him as he looked out over the stars appreciatively. He shut the doors and went to his console, Amy close behind. She watched him as he flew around his console, operating it with a swift, almost graceful ease. He whirled around the controls, flipping and poking and pressing and twisting. When it came time to type in coordinates, he looked at Amy.

"Pick a number," he instructed. "Any number at all, as long as it's higher than two hundred."

She looked at him skeptically. "Why?" Then, after a moment of pause in which he waited patiently at his console and she waited patiently for an answer she didn't get: "Four hundred thirty-six."

He smiled. "And it was 2010, right?" he said.

She nodded, frowning slightly.

"Then let's go to 2446, four hundred thirty-six years in your future."

She smiled excitedly, the frown instantaneously gone. Whatever skepticism that remained in the mind of his new companion had by now vanished, and she was simply eager for her first real adventure with the mysterious madman that whisked her away. Not only was she unimaginably enthusiastic, but the Doctor was too; the gaining of this brand-new companion did not come without curiosity, wonder, and delight, just like all of his other companions, all the way back to being in his first incarnation, brought him on their first trip in the TARDIS.

He held onto his console with a grin to Amy, and she clung to it as well, laughing in amazement as they flew crazily through the Time Vortex.

They landed just as clumsily as they flew, and the two smiled briefly before running to the door.

"Wait!" Amy exclaimed. "I'm still in my nightie…"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "You've been dead for hundreds of years. What are you afraid of? One of your friends seeing you in your nightie out here?" She glared at him slightly but without real anger as he led her out of the TARDIS and firmly closed the doors. "Besides," he told her, "I'm wearing this ridiculous outfit, so—"

"Yes, but at least that's _clothes,_" she argued.

He raised an eyebrow. "So are you saying that you have no clothes on right now?"

She rolled her eyes. "No, that is not what I am saying, and you know what I am—"

"No, actually, I don't think I entirely get what you're sayi—"

"Oh, hush. You know what I meant and you're just trying to be diffi—"

"I happen to think I'm not being difficult at—"

"What are you doing here?" a voice exclaimed, silencing both of them and cutting the Doctor off midsentence before Amy could. They looked at a woman in some sort of uniform, a gun pointed steadily at the Doctor. The evenness of her posture defied the look of pure horror and shock on her face. "What are you? Where are you from?"

The Doctor raised his hands in surrender and Amy did the same a few moments later. "Why don't you just put the gun down…" he began calmly, but the woman would not be calmed.

"How did you get on this ship? Are you even real?" She narrowed her eyes and looked between them. "You're not, are you?" she said bitterly, putting the gun away. "What are you—holograms? Robots? Flesh? What?—and how, exactly, did you get on this ship?"

Amy's widened eyes turned to the Doctor as both woman waited for an explanation from him. "We don't mean any harm," he said, "I swear. We're here because of—of this." He pointed to the TARDIS, which the woman had been glancing at warily as she spoke. "And we're real. See?" He pinched Amy.

"Oi!" she said indignantly.

"See? Real. Not robots or Flesh," he promised the woman. She narrowed her eyes dubiously. Her hand rested dangerously on her gun. Then he thought back to what she said and frowned. "Ship?" he asked. "I meant to land us right on Earth."

Amy looked over at him. "You are seriously bad driver."

"I'd like to see you fly the TARDIS!" he protested lightheartedly.

"No, but seriously. It's worse than driving a car drunk, your flying," she told him. "You could get us killed ten times easier."

The woman pulled out the gun again. "I do not have time for your nonsensical bickering!"

The Doctor and Amy's hands, which had fallen back to their sides, whipped right back up into the air again alertly.

"Put the gun down," the Doctor urged the woman.

She pointed with her finger to a doorway behind them. Then she stepped forward and motioned with her gun for them to go to whatever was behind the door. Amy and the Doctor hesitantly did. Amy moved closer to the Doctor and he stood slightly behind her, closer to the woman. He was ready to jump in front of a bullet that the woman might shoot at a moment's notice. Hopefully, if that were to happen, a moment's notice would be enough.

"Hurry," she demanded behind them.

"You don't have to do this," he told her. "We mean no harm. Tell us what's going on, and we'll help! Just put the gun down—"

"One more word and a bullet will be in your head!" she warned.

Amy looked over at the Doctor and mouthed, _Shut up!_

The woman rushed them forward into the room, which turned out to not be a room at all. It was instead a hallway, just as barren as the room they had landed in with the exception of the room seemed to have had work done on it, whereas the hall looked like it hadn't been used in a while. After passing four doors, two on the left and two on the right, they were led through a door marked "_i5/5_." Inside that door waited four cells, each with their own dim light bulbs hanging over each one. The woman flicked on the lights of the cells on the left. Each cell held nothing but a toilet and a sink next to each toilet. There was no bed in any of them. The cells on the right shared a side and the cells on the left did too. The woman pulled out keys and unlocked the two cells on the left. In they were forced to go. She locked them up and began to walk away.

Just before she shut the door, the woman turned around. "Wait. Show me your pockets," the woman told the Doctor, as Amy didn't exactly have any. He cursed silently, hoping she would've forgotten that part, as she was obviously skittish and seemed to be slightly forgetful. Not to mention something odd was tangibly going on, and that was getting to her.

He showed her his trench coat pockets and his suit pockets. She confiscated several items, but the fact that his trench coat pockets were bigger on the inside made it easy for him to keep some things. He hoped that the dim light would conceal his sonic screwdriver, but she caught sight of it. "Oi!" the woman exclaimed. "Take off your coat and your suit jacket." The Doctor reluctantly did and handed them over, and he and Amy were left alone.

She looked at him. The dumbfounded silence was suffocating for a moment before they began to think of escaping, the Doctor's ideas much more plausible than what Amy's mind came up with.

"What… what just happened?" Amy asked after what was probably five minutes. "Are we trapped? Surely you've got something."

"Yeah," he said meekly. "The woman'll tell her boss and hopefully he'll see reason."

She raised an eyebrow. "I'm starting to think that trusting you isn't a good idea," she said. "This isn't how it always is, is it?"

He shook his head, hoping this was just how she was on her first trip only since this was no way to act and still withhold a position in the TARDIS. He also hoped this because he wanted her as a companion; she'd seemed like a very good one when they were battling against the Atraxi and Prisoner Zero back in Leadworth. "Just… most of the time."

She looked down. "Is it bad that I'm still really excited?"

The Doctor grinned, all suspicions that she wouldn't be able to handle the TARDIS gone as quickly as they had come. "Not at all," he replied. "This ship seems terribly behind though."

"What do you mean?" Amy asked.

"The whole design," he said. "It all seems very… late twenty-second, _maybe _early twenty-third century." He narrowed his eyes.

"But it's the twenty-fifth century, yeah?" Amy asked.

The Doctor walked up to a pole and ran his finger down it, seeming to ignore his companion. She rolled her eyes. He licked his finger and shook his head. "No, it's 2203," he said sheepishly.

"You took us to the wrong place?" she said. "Aren't you supposed to be _good_ at flying your machine?"

"Supposed to be," he said. "Anyway, I don't think it was my fault."

"Excuses."

"Hush," he said, rolling his eyes. Amy smirked. "Sometimes she takes me to the wrong places."

"First—'she'? And second—oh, I'm sure." Amy smiled at him wryly.

The Doctor ignored the second part but said, "She. The TARDIS."

"It's female?" Amy asked with a slight frown. "Or are you just really attached to her?"

The Doctor looked over at her. "She has a soul, a heart. The TARDIS is a she."

"But how can a machine, even one with a soul, be a she or a he?"

"Never mind that, Amy."

The door swung open and a man entered. In the dimness of the room, the Doctor could make out nothing but his general features and almost none of his black uniform. The man had a dark, unfitting mustache and large, bushy eyebrows. His nose was long and narrow, and his ears stuck out even with his dark hair over most of them. He couldn't quite tell what color his eyes were, but the man seemed to be cross-eyed. Glasses rested on the tip of his nose, and he pushed them up.

In short, nothing about the man seemed particularly menacing. In fact, he even seemed much like a wimp. A nerd. Someone who might have been picked on as a child. Then he spoke. "I am sorry about the way Calydia treated you," the man apologized emotionlessly. "She has been driven mad by our time spent endlessly in this spaceship without return. However, you are unauthorized to be aboard this ship unless you are allowing us to come back to Earth. Still, no teleportation systems have been created yet, that we know of, and even if we are just clueless, we are too far out for them to work."

He paused a moment. His hands were behind his back. He was considerably tall, maybe the same height or slightly taller than the Doctor. He seemed to be awaiting some sort of response, like a sob from distressed prisoners or a rebellious protest to their imprisonment, but the Doctor and Amy stayed silent, having nothing to say. They didn't even know the man's name. All they knew what his voice was like a knife: sharp and harmless at a glance, but deadly cruel underneath the mind of the insane or vengeful.

"Anyhow, I am Captain Ellrick. You will be staying here, I presume, until you die or mine and my crew's exile is revoked," Captain Ellrick stated. "However, I would like to know how you got aboard this ship."

"What are you in exile for?" the Doctor asked, ignoring Ellrick's speech and his request at the end.

Ellrick shifted uncomfortably. "I asked you a question," he said calmly.

"And I didn't answer."

Ellrick nodded to Amy. "Who is the woman? And why in God's name is she wearing her nightclothes?"

"She's—"

"Amy Pond," Amy piped up. "And _he _wouldn't let me change!"

Ellrick seemed unfazed. "Who are you, then?" he asked the Doctor.

"Me? I'm the Doctor," he answered.

"Doctor who?" the captain asked, eyes narrowing, which was the most emotion he'd shown besides his brief moment of discomfort.

"It's just the Doctor."

Captain Ellrick shook his head but said nothing more. He unlocked their cells and Amy and the Doctor happily got out. He smirked at her, his plan being right, and she punched his arm lightly. They both knew where the TARDIS was and knew that they'd be able to get out of the ship anytime they wanted, so they were not worried as the captain led them to the empty room and told them to stay there. He went down the empty hall, and when he returned, he held two backpacks and a key.

"This contains your uniforms, schedules, and alarms. You'll be bunking in Door _b2/12_. You have kitchen duty for lunch together and cleanup duty after breakfast. After dinner you will be in the recycling offices. Everything between those times you will find on your schedules. Go," Ellrick ordered with a superior tone to his voice that defied the emotionless he'd sounded with before. It seemed like he felt smug to be in charge again, like the others weren't really under him. Or maybe they were too far under him, and the Doctor and Amy seemed to prove a challenge for him.

Amy spoke up as she slid the backpack onto her back. "How do we get to 'Door _b2/12_,' or whatever you said it was?"

"That is hall _i._" He pointed to the empty hall. "Figure the rest out on your own."

Amy shrugged and looked to the Doctor who, with a cheerful smile that did not match the captain's viewpoint of their situation, took her hand and pulled her to the door on the opposite side of the room of hall _i_, leaving Ellrick standing baffled in the empty room. He seemed to just notice the TARDIS and with alarm he walked over to it. The Doctor heard him try to open its doors. He did not say anything as he guided Amy through was proved to be hall _h._

Loud machinery seemed to be in the rooms of this hall. _Probably where the ship is powered,_ the Doctor thought.

Hall _g_ held a few rooms. It was a small hall just off the side of hall _h,_ branching off from the normal path to hall _f._ The entire layout of the ship seemed frivolously mazelike, but the many people they passed in the wide, white, gray, and silver hallways seemed to know perfectly well how to navigate the ship. The peeked down all the halls—hall _e_ held everything to do with food, including recycling, which was to Amy's horror because as she said, _I'd rather not be eating and drinking our… waste_. Hall _d_ held many doors marked _DO NOT ENTER _signs, and under each one held the words _Authorized crew only._ Hall _c _branched off from hall _d_ like _g_ did from _h_, but they heard screams from that hall and decided not to look. Finally they found hall _b_, and as it had taken about an hour to navigate the ship and many people pointing them in the right direction, they decided not to go seeking out the final hallway. They entered their room and settled in on the uncomfortable bed provided.

"What do you think this is all about?" Amy asked him, lounging on her bed and squirming as she tried to put the lumpy pillow in a way that was comfortable. There was only one bed, which had left them at first in an uncomfortable silence, but the Doctor shrugged it off and hopped playfully onto the bed, very aware of how far away the TARDIS was. He reassured himself that it was safe.

"I think it's some sort of prison," the Doctor said. "They're in exile, after all, and they sent a man who'd done nothing—Ellrick—to be their captain until they all died or until all exiles were revoked."

"You think these people are all criminals? And you're just going to stay here?" Amy asked.

"These people are obviously under close watch. I don't think they'd risk their life killing us when they still have a chance to return to Earth," the Doctor said.

"Well, surely no one's done anything so terrible that they'd be exiled to space, right? Everything that could happen out here—it's so risky. I'd rather just take a cell back on Earth," Amy said.

He shook his head. "Earth is having a tough time right now," he explained. "Economies in most countries have plummeted. No one has enough money to harbor their criminals in jails. So what do they do? They send them up in untested or unsafe or unusable spaceships. Sometimes they survive, like here, and sometimes the ships can't handle it, and that's why no one but criminals goes up in them."

"But—that's horrible," she said, frowning.

He nodded grimly. "It gets better though. Most countries get out of debt. The countries that don't ally with the richest the countries, which are the ones that didn't even go into bankruptcy during this worldwide depression," he told her. "And then you lot decided to start sending more people into space again." He grinned at her. "You spread yourself across the stars until the Earth burns and the stars become your home."

"That's morbid."

"That's genius," he corrected her.

"No, what you said. That was morbid," she explained.

He raised a questioning eyebrow.

"You grinned and then told me about Earth's death. It's a bit morbid."

He rolled his eyes. "But the rest is brilliant. You lot—you humans—you're beautiful. Just beautiful."

She raised an eyebrow. "You look just like us."

"No, not like that. You're brilliant. You're—wait, no. You look just like _us_," the Doctor said. "Time Lords came first."

They spent the rest of the time until dinner talking, as it said on their schedule: _FIRST DAY: NOTHING BUT DINNER AND SLEEP._

The Doctor sensed something was wrong on this too-perfect prison ship. That was the only reason they were saying, though he told Amy when she asked that it was to observe. She accepted the answer without further question and changed in their small bathroom to the uniform they were issued, but the Doctor stayed in his suit, though he took off the jacket as it was a bit warm. He reminded himself that he needed to get a new trench coat too, but it didn't stick in his head long.

They made it to dinner and got themselves trays of food. Amy looked down at the food distastefully and the water the same. "Why couldn't you have not told me what this was made of? Now I'm pretty sure I'd rather starve in here," she said.

He shook his head. "Don't eat it then. I'll bring the TARDIS into our room so we can eat in there."

"And sleep in there?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

He nodded. "Yes. And sleep in there."

"Good. No offense," she added.

He smiled slightly. "None taken."

People stared at the mysterious newcomers throughout dinner and no one sat anywhere near them. They tried not to make their glances apparent, as if they thought they'd be reprimanded if they were caught. Captain Ellrick came into the cafeteria in the middle of dinner and everyone stiffened, staring at their plates. All conversation died down. Three men in the same uniforms stood behind him.

"Recycling crew 11, stand," he said, and about ten people stood up. He looked at them with fire in his dark, cross-eyed eyes. "You were short on your food made." The ten people nodded shamefully. "Hand your plates over to the front. They will be given to those in the med-wards. You are unworthy of today's meal due to your lack of effort in providing for your fellow shipmates."

"That's harsh," Amy said under her breath. "They're so skinny already."

They were. Every person in recycling crew 11 seemed like they hadn't had a decent meal in a long time.

"Plates to the front. Now!" Ellrick shouted menacingly, and people scrambled to do as he said.

"Poor people," Amy said softly. She looked hopefully at the Doctor. "We have to feed them in the TARDIS."

"Amy, they all need fed. We can't get every person in here to get in the TARDIS for a late dinner and go unnoticed," he told her apologetically.

"So we're just—just letting them starve?"

"Of course not. I'll fix this, Amelia Pond. Don't worry."

The entire cafeteria was silent for the rest of the meal.

…

The Doctor sneaked off to the empty room, which had simply become its official name between the Doctor and Amy. He slid the key into the lock of the TARDIS when someone stepped in the room and gasped slightly when they saw the Doctor. "Oh, you scared me!" someone said behind him. He pulled the key out quietly and hid it as he turned around to face the person. "Who are you?" a woman asked. "What's that?"

"This? Oh, I don't know. Something they've up and built. For recreation, I think," the Doctor added smoothly, shrugging.

"Recreation? I doubt that," the woman muttered.

"It's hard to believe," the Doctor agreed. The manner in which he lied made it hard not to believe him, so she did. "Anyway, it's weird we've never seen each other, being on this ship so long."

"And what's even weirder is your clothes!" she exclaimed. "I think I'd remember spotting you."

"Oh, this? I don't normally wear this." He smiled kindly at her. "Well, I'd better go."

"Yes, I'd best go too. I was just curious about how much progress had been done in here. No one had been in it since the ship was built until the captain and his blokes decided to turn it into a recreation hall—ha! Maybe you're right. Maybe that stupid thing is for their cruel idea of recreation. It'll probably be a pummeling room—that's the officials' idea of fun!"

The Doctor let her ramble. The more information he got in any way possible the better and this woman seemed like the perfect source, and obviously she didn't get tired of talking.

"Have they beaten others before?" he asked her.

She looked over at him, frowning. "Whoa, you found the officials' stash or something?"

He grinned sheepishly at her and she raised an eyebrow, but answered him anyway.

"Yeah, ya know. That little Johnnie kid—poor guy. And poor Johnnie's parents too, all that work they got now." She nodded sympathetically in the general direction of the noisy hall he and Amy had gone through. "And then there was Timothy Danvers. Beat him to death. And Sylvia Marquetti. List goes on."

"What did they do with Timothy Danvers's body?" the Doctor asked her.

"How do you expect me to know?" she exclaimed, looking at him curiously. "I've really got to go before curfew…"

The Doctor nodded, reminding himself to find out what time curfew was. He waited until she turned down another hallway before going back to the empty room. He shoved the key in the lock and raced into his TARDIS with a wide grin. Then he took her to his and Amy's room. She swung the doors open the second he had landed and smiled widely, spinning around.

"You've been here half a day and already you're going mad, aren't you?" the Doctor teased.

She shook her head. "But I'll tell you what I am: _hungry._"

…

The next day the Doctor and Amy did as they were told, lying as low as possible. The Doctor even wore his uniform, but he slid his sonic screwdriver into a pocket. It was reassuring to feel it there with him, especially when he and Amy were split up. That was torture. During the first three hours of the day, he had to constantly tell her when to let things go and how to act sometimes, and when she was split away from him to go to construction while he had a free period, he patted the pocket where the screwdriver was rested repeatedly for the knowledge that it was there. It was safe. And so would be Amy.

They were brought back together for lunch and Amy scowled as she told him how one of the officials, as the people on the ship called them, yelled at a little girl until she cried. Her job was to nail things together, and when she didn't nail something right, she was scolded severely. The Doctor listened to her story and nodded throughout it, but she was thinking about how they got supplies to build whatever they were building. It certainly wasn't in hall _i._ Maybe hall _a?_ He doubted it.

"I'm going to eat on my break," she said. "So don't worry about me getting in trouble. I'll be in the TARDIS. I hope you have a lot of bananas." She grinned.

He smiled distantly.

…

During their next free period they had together, the Doctor and Amy went exploring, specifically to find the officials. It wasn't hard; they assumed they'd be in hall _a_ for the most part since they didn't see anything in their previous exploration the day before when trying to find hall _b_ that they thought the officials would except as their place to stay. In hall _a_, there were many rooms, all of them surprisingly free to get to, but each one required special keys that only the officials might have. That was fine, the Doctor thought, just as long as he could hear through the walls.

He brought his stethoscope just for this, unsuccessfully trying to hide it from people walking by him as he made his way to hall _a_, but fortunately all anyone did was give him really odd looks and seem wary of his existence. That and the fact that no one recognized the two of them did not help their "lying low" case. No matter, though, because he was there.

The door marked _Captain_ was the one he leaned against and put his stethoscope up to. Nothing but a low murmur was audible. He thought he caught the words _shipment_ and _at long last_. Then a few moments later, he was certain he heard a low, unfamiliar voice say, "…fee… as soon as I… I want."

He told Amy what he'd heard as they walked away, but as they were turning down hall _b_, an official bumped into them. The furious look on his face visibly frightened Amy but the Doctor had experienced fury realer than that of which the official was pretending to feel so that those who saw his face would be scared and therefore be scared of him. He let his face mask into nothingness as the man narrowed his eyes.

"What are you doing down this hall? Everyone knows not to come down here without permission!" He grabbed Amy's arms and fury flashed red in his eyes—literally. Inhuman eyes blinked from the human eye sockets as he raised his feet. Amy looked pleadingly at the Doctor as he whipped out his sonic screwdriver and soniced the official. He shoved Amy away as his flesh melted into scaly brown skin and his hair faded to stubble on the top of his red, scaly head. His eyes were more of crimson than blood and he was two feet taller than them all. "You… idiot!" the alien exclaimed in a voice as low and foreign as that of whoever was in the captain's office. "_You will be severely punished._"

"Run?" Amy asked, but he was already hauling her off, pulling her by her hand.

* * *

_To be continued and all of that.  
_

_I'm not overly thrilled with how this turned out, but I think for my first attempts at creating a Doctor Who adventure not off of an episode prewritten, it's okay._


	4. Surrender and Success

_I hope you like the chapter, and please review! By the way, my profile has my new updating schedule since I'm writing a lot of fanfics. Obviously I'm early this time.  
_

* * *

_"Run?" Amy asked, but he was already hauling her off, pulling her by her hand._

The Doctor and Amy flew down the hallway, trying desperately to make it to the TARDIS. As they did so, the Doctor ran through a million plans in his head but his mind was whirring left and right and here and there all too fast so he couldn't think of any real one. All he knew was to make it to the TARDIS. Make it to the TARDIS, and figure out who the aliens were and what to do from there.

It was a disgusting, slimy monster—sort of reminding him of the Slitheen, but that was probably just because of the way they tried to blend in with the population by taking on a human body in a grotesque, gory way. He didn't think it was from Raxicoricofallapatorious or Clom, from the looks of it afterwards. He'd guess, actually, more along the lines of being somewhere from—

"Doctor!" Amy exclaimed urgently, like she'd seen a ghost. He looked down at her. "What do we do?"

"What? What's going on?" They continued to run, which confused him. If they had encountered something preventing them from getting to the TARDIS, why didn't she stop running and pull him back too? He scoured the area with his eyes, but found nothing more than a lot of alarmed citizens of the ship—nothing conspicuous. What had she found?

She rolled her eyes at him. "You haven't told me the plan!" she told him.

He frowned, remembering that he needed to explain his plans again now that he had Amy around to travel with him. It wouldn't be bad, though; he liked having something to explain things to. It made him feel much less lonely when he could turn to his companion and ramble on to them about all of time and space, showing off his vast knowledge. He'd gotten out of the habit ever since Donna left.

"Oh," he began. Then after a moment, "Oh! Yes. The TARDIS. We need to get to the TARDIS!"

Amy stuck her tongue out at him. "Don't forget to tell me the plan anymore, yeah?"

He smiled. "Yeah," he agreed.

Alarms began to blare over the ship and the two sped up again, the Doctor shouting, "Allons-y!"

Now the whole ship was left in panic. They fled to their bedrooms and eyed the Doctor and Amy warily, but few dared to go near them. When a couple people rushed at them, holding guns, clearly at the advantage, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and backed off like it would blow up the universe. He grinned joyfully. They didn't know what it was! Brilliant.

Just as they edged toward their apartment where the TARDIS was, just as it seemed that they had won this battle, out of nowhere one of Ellrick's sidekicks came up to them, gun raised. The Doctor knew a sonic wouldn't get him out of this. But he made an important discovery—the gun the still human-looking alien held only had tranquilizing bullets. No doubt getting captured by them would still mean certain death, but at least there was some sort of chance of survival if one of them was shot.

The sidekick's flaming eyes danced between them. The Doctor tried to keep himself lined up between the sidekick and Amy so that she couldn't get shot. Then she could hopefully get to the TARDIS, activate the protocol that would take her home, and be safe. If she was anything like the other companions, she would probably try to save him, and when she did that, if he was lucky, she would save the both of them.

But that didn't happen.

The Doctor saw the bullet too late. He tried to jump in front of it but there was no way, so as he stumbled forward toward it, he screamed at Amy, "_Get down!_" Time seemed to slow down, each second turning into a minute, each minute turning into an hour. He watched in horror as Amy fell to the floor, and he knew it was over. He would get to her first—in fact, he was already to her—but he couldn't avoid getting tranquilized if he was lugging an unconscious girl too. He would have to try.

He attempted to scoop her up as her ran, grabbing at her arm, but it didn't work out that way. He had to hop over her and turn around to avoid falling, and then when he'd accomplished that, the alien's gun was ready to shoot again and he had to duck away from the bullet. The alien rushed forward, gun recharging but still perfectly capable of rendering him unconscious in a more painful way. The Doctor stood up and tried one last time to get Amy. When the alien, grabbed hold of her, yanking her—which made him nearly jump on him in his fury at being so rough with her—he knew that her only chance was for him to get to their door, which was just a few yards away, before he was tranquilized.

The Doctor ran like there was a Dalek chasing him. He ran like Rose Tyler was in the TARDIS, waiting for him. He ran like everyone was waiting in the TARDIS for him to save the world—Jamie, Sarah Jane, Donna, every single one of them.

He ran like Amelia Pond was in trouble.

In the nick of time he made it. When he closed and locked the door, a tranquilizer bullet embedded itself lightly in the door by the sound of the _thump_. He hurried to the TARDIS, because he knew that a locked door wouldn't offer him much time. As soon as he swung the blue doors open, he dived in and locked the doors, breathing a soft, halfhearted sigh of relief. There was hope.

But what was he to do? He was alone with no plan and he wasn't even sure who these aliens were! Where were they keeping Amy? Would they kill her as soon as she got to the captain? He had to think and think quickly, but he was drawing a terrible, cruel blank in his head.

He heard someone beating on the door and got an idea. He got everything ready for it, shoving things in his pockets. He ran to the console and rapidly plugged in the coordinates, grinning at his cleverness. The familiar sounds of his machine blinking in and out of reality flew in his ears from his still new, whimsical TARDIS that he really did like quite a lot. He had a plan. He wouldn't lose her. No one would have to die—not today.

As he was flipping the switches and holding on tight, zooming through the Time Vortex, he thought over the plan in his head, taking a breath as he edged closer to his destination, which would only take a second since it was still within the limits of the ship…

Wait. _No._

_One-two-three-four._

Like the beat of the Doctor's hearts, like the rhythm in the Master's head, the alien had knocked on the TARDIS doors. He had knocked four times—or had he knocked five? No—the Doctor was certain he had knocked four times.

Now he hesitated when they landed, not flying out enthusiastically with a plan in mind. That hesitation made him feel guilty, but he was still so selfish from being along too long. He was still broken, shattered, undone. The hurt hadn't gone away yet. And now all he could think of was the people he'd lost recently: Donna. That had been his fault; it had been his hand. Rose. Stuck in the other universe. Maybe the human Doctor had needed her and maybe that had been where she ultimately should have been, but he could've figured something out. That would haunt him for a long time.

And the Master—oh, God, the Master. That hit him and stung him in both of his hearts. The Master! His last tie to the Time Lords, and he'd let him die with the rest of them, stuck for all of eternity in the Time Lock. No matter what they had gone through in all of the years of knowing each other, no matter what the evil things he'd done were, the Master and the Doctor were friends, so very long ago. And somewhere, seared onto the four hearts of the two men, was that friendship, bound in stone by the little children running through the Master's father's estate back on Gallifrey. No matter who he'd become, in the end, he died to save Earth—and the Doctor. In the end, he was one of the little boys running around back on Gallifrey, just as the Doctor felt like he was now.

But he knew that the time to ponder on his losses was not now, or he'd have to add another name to that list to think about. He took a breath. He wouldn't be cheerful. He would be angry. Angry at the aliens for taking Amy. And angry at them for taking his own life, though he would regenerate. It wasn't fair! It wasn't, wasn't, wasn't at all, but there was nothing he could do but take it as it was and always would be.

He typed something into his console, a quick order, the vital piece to his plan, and walked slowly out of the TARDIS, hands raised. He left the doors open but kept the key hidden in his suit jacket, the bigger on the inside pockets concealing it under a thick layer of random things he'd put in there from his console room—junk that he unnecessarily had strewn about under the console. It wasn't exactly very tidy under there, especially not with all those wires hanging down.

"I surrender," he told them, sounding defeated. His head hung in shame. He saw that Amy was awake and flashed a very quick wink—almost like a wince, as if he hadn't been wanting her to be awake, but only with one eye. She seemed to be hoping he would do something like this, so she took it as what it was: a sign that this wasn't actually the end. She still looked tense, terrified, and angry at the Doctor, which was perfect. She would be a really good companion if she worked this well all the time.

Captain Ellrick narrowed his eyes. "I don't believe you," he snarled. His flesh melted away, as they were in the safety of his office in the captain's wing of the ship.

The Doctor shook his head. "If you keep my friend alive, I won't do anything to you and—and I'll let you have my machine." He nodded to the big blue box, the doors wide open.

One of the sidekicks, already out of his human disguise, looked in and said in his snarly voice, "Boss, it's bigger on the inside!"

Another narrowed his eyes and poked his head in. "My goodness, I think it's Gallifreyan!"

Ellrick looked at the Doctor with a raised eyebrow. "You are Time Lord?" he asked, shaking his head. "Then this must be a trick. Last of the Time Lords, handing over his TARDIS? I doubt it."

The Doctor looked to Amy sadly, like he regretted ending his entire world, his grip to time and space, for her. Then he began to imagine doing that, what it would be like, and felt sad. He couldn't let the TARDIS die with them, couldn't let them rule time with it, but at the same time there was no way he could let a companion die for him. He wasn't sure what he'd do… But he knew he'd never have to go there. He wouldn't be letting his companions or his TARDIS die.

"Maybe he's telling the truth, boss," the _bigger-on-the-inside!_ sidekick reasoned.

The _it's-Gallifreyan!_ one nodded. They looked very similar. The Doctor realized they were siblings.

"I don't know," a particularly ugly one said in a husky, ugly voice that made the Doctor want to clear his throat just hearing it.

Gallifreyan elbowed Ugly. "Hey—we get a TARDIS. Shut up."

Captain Ellrick considered this, and then after a moment he nodded. "Fine, fine. Maybe a better disguiser will be in here—mine's crap!"

_So that's why he's not like his sidekicks,_ he thought. _I should've figured that out._

He nodded. "Yes, I do. Take it—just take Amy home."

Amy nodded vigorously. "Yes, oh, please," she begged, looking to the Doctor. "And take him with me."

_Nice touch._

He began to wonder if she was really playing. But then he realized that even though he hardly knew Amy yet, he was quite sure that she wouldn't beg the aliens like that. And she would _not_ whine and say, "Oh, yes, please," if she weren't acting. But the fact that it through him for a loop almost cheered him up. She was turning out to be pretty good. Then he remembered the sidekick beating on his door. _One-two-three-four._

Maybe it was a false alarm. Maybe he wouldn't die.

He doubted it. He'd gotten too lucky too much. A lot of people had knocked four times in dire situations he found himself stuck in and he didn't die. Now, he was sure, it wouldn't last too much longer. Especially after the luck of escaping the Master! As soon as he realized he was back, the Doctor was certain that that would be who would kill him. Or regenerate him. Wouldn't that have made sense though? He almost wished it went like that—if it meant that the Master wouldn't have gotten trapped in the Time Vortex.

Captain Ellrick ordered, "Into the TARDIS! Edenemian"—the Doctor searched his mind for a planet where "Edenemian" was a name—"get the girl and the Time Lord."

"Yes, sir," said the ugly one—Edenemian.

Amy was harshly untied. She was jerked up to her feet. She glared so furiously at the alien that the fire in his red eyes seemed to die a second before regaining their confidence and viciousness.

For a moment, the Doctor could almost imagine Donna yelling, "Oi!" and shoving the alien back. The pain was still fresh. Why couldn't it just go away? He knew from experience that it would always feel fresh. He knew because all of them still felt fresh—all of the deaths, all of the losses. And, he thought every time, it was even more unfair than regenerating when there was still so much he could do as the tenth Doctor that maybe the eleventh couldn't. He resented whoever Eleven would be. He knew pretty soon he would have to accept him—if he didn't die—but that didn't mean he couldn't resent him up until the very moment he became him, as if Eleven was a traitor, not even a Doctor at all.

Like—

"Hey, move," Gallifrey sidekick said.

"What's keeping you up?" Bigger on the Inside sidekick yelled at him.

"Shut up, Versiti," Gallifrey sidekick snapped as he shoved Amy and the Doctor into the TARDIS.

The Doctor took Amy's hand, but she hugged him, burying her face in his suit. "What's the plan?" he heard her whisper.

He hugged her back and hid his lips. "You'll see."

"Time Lord," Ellrick ordered, "show me how to fly it!"

"_Her,_" the Doctor corrected as he stepped up to the console. Ellrick hung over his shoulder as he poked in the code for creating a new bathroom in bowling alley two. Eh. He needed to do that sometime anyway.

Ellrick frowned. "It's that easy?"

He nodded. "For simple flights like traveling to Earth since I go there so much. I'll show you how to do harder flights if you want me to—"

"Yes!"

"Okay," he said. "Where to?"

Ellrick grinned delightedly. "Our home. Everia."

The Doctor frowned at them as he finally saw who they were. They had changed since he'd last seen them, but yes—they were Everians, an odd, power-hungry race that, if they weren't ignorant and clumsy, could probably rise to the danger of a Dalek. Fortunately, their foolishness saved the universe more than the Doctor ever did when it came to their kind. Of course, their spaceships were very advanced.

But he knew a place where they'd fit in just fine.

He typed in the code for the new protocol he'd made and the TARDIS zoomed through the Time Vortex bumpily, to the Everians displeasure. Many, including Ellrick, fell to their bottoms and growled. Amy stepped closer to the Doctor when this happened, as many of them had quite bloodthirsty, chillingly cold looks in their frightening eyes. The stubble on the tops of their heads seemed to stand up.

When they'd landed, the Doctor and Amy were pulled out onto the planet he had taken them to. It was a barren place where civilization was abundant but it was so majorly behind even the humans that they would never catch up, never in the planet's lifespan even get anywhere near the simplest of technology, let alone means of escape like spaceships. And luckily, due to their great ignorance, the Doctor and Amy were the closest ones to the TARDIS.

Before the aliens even realized what was going on, the two of them were inside and had locked the doors. The Doctor plugged coordinates in for the ship and grinned at Amy. What had he been worrying about? But still, the threat of the person who would knock four times hung over him ominously. His or at least his incarnation's imminent, inescapable death was not something he took lightly whenever it happened to come up.

"Allons-y, Amelia Pond!" he said. "Let's go save those prisoners."

* * *

They took the humans back to Earth and explained what happened, and then off to see the universe they went. The Doctor showed Amy to the wardrobe with a smile.

"Thanks," she said. "Finally."

They walked into the wardrobe. He grinned at the sight of its new design, spinning around until he found his normal suit and trench coat, waiting for him. Even a new pair of Converse were nearby, as his were tattered from his crash back in Scotland. He hadn't changed his shoes when he put on his new suit, so they were still a mess. He slid into his outfit in one of the changing rooms as Amy picked out something to wear.

He waited for her in the console room when he was dressed, and she came back not long after in a red shirt, brown jacket, miniskirt, and boots. "So," she said, "where to next?"

He grinned at her. "Anywhere in time and space."

"I knew that." She smiled at him slightly. "Is it bad that I had fun back there?"

"Yes," he said, and his face was serious as he looked from the console to her. But after a moment he grinned. "But so did I."

* * *

_So I figured when Eleven regenerates Ten could regenerate into Eleven and I could have fun writing the Eleventh Doctor during the twelfth's era and the twelfth during the thirteenth's and I am waaaaayyyy too in to this. X-D _

_Also, I'm thinking of: getting Rory in early, doing something with Edgar Allen Poe (he really fascinates me), and something with Amelia Earhart (how perfect would that be?). _

_And fuck yeah I put a fiftieth anniversary reference in there! It's getting so close eeeeeeeeeeep. And I've basically contracted a very not-rare disease called I Can't Wait Anymore/Give It To Me **Now** Disease. It's where you lose the capacity to wait for things like books and movies and TV shows, and the moment you read or hear about it, you have it. So I hope you guys have fun with I Can't Wait Anymore Disease!_

_THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS I CAN'T WAIT FOR BUT I'M GOING TO JUST END THIS CHAPTER BEFORE I GO ON LISTING ALL OF THEM._


End file.
